Friday, February 22, 2008

Listener 3967 - Lots to Find



Replacement of one word by another, some clues have extra words. I didn't make the initial correlation that the sets of words were complimentary, and after solving a few clues I thought that animals and birds needed to be replaced by either scouting terms or army/fraternity terms.

The first letters of the extra words after a while gave me BOOK OF ??TAL??? which I thought for a while was "Book of Taliesin" which pops up when you start entering "book of t" into google live search. Returning to possibilities of there being a letter before the T got me to the Book of St Albans, which came to mind fairly quickly, having passed by St. Albans when I was in England last May. Wikipedia told me that the Book of St Albans contains collective nouns. AHA! I have to replace animals with collective nouns and vice versa... even for a while I didn't figure out that it was a direct placement. As you can see by the grid, even having worked out the theme, I couldn't find all the collective nouns needed. When there were several available, it seems I picked the wrong one, particularly in a clue like 2 down, where I had "leap special" meaning "peal" and "peal" being the collective noun for "bells" (not animals, I know).

I felt good about getting the theme, but bad about getting the theme and then having such a poorly-filled out grid.

Tally: Listener 3, George 2.

3 comments:

Will Rogers said...

Well, after toying with different themes, got there in the end. Wikipedia seems to have different articles on the subject, but one was comprehensive enough. Was a bit misled by neither heifer or leap (for leopards) playing the game, though.

p.s. Don't know if you do the number ones, but Ruslan seems to have left an ambiguity in his preamble. If i place the each-way bet in the example do i enter 300 or 400 in the grid??

George the Bastard said...

I could be risking condemnation as there's still a few days left to get 3970 in. But the preamble states that "the grid entries are the corresponding pay-outs if the bets succeed", so that includes the amount you bet.

The example was 100p each way at 12 to 1.

So if it was a win, the payout (entered) would be 1200+100+300+100 = 1700
If it was a place, the payout (entered) would be 300+100 = 700.

If it was a straight "win" bet, you would enter 1200+100 = 1300.

George the Bastard said...

oops = I know 300+100 = 400... d'oh